Megaresy

Two things from the megachurch front:

First, there's this from the New York Times, a look into megachurch rock and roll:

“When you start a church,” said Tom Mercer, 52, the senior pastor, “you don’t decide who you’re going to reach and then pick a music style. You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come.”

This is the pastor/coordinator/CEO of something called the High Desert Church near LA doing the talking, and he's talking about a music style that produces lyrics like this:

Hey, hey, hey, God I love you
Hey, hey, hey, God I need you
I know there’s not anything you can’t do
I know there’s nothing you won’t see me through
Hey God!

I especially like that last dimetric iamb (or is it, God forbid, a trochee?).

Second, there's this shocking confession from Willow Creek, whose pastoral staff just had that nauseating sense of self-awareness from having discovered that megachurches may not be all that effective in producing Christians. Here's Bill Hybels, the pastor/coordinator/CEO, wringing his hands:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

There is a reason why Pastor Bill is resorting to "we should have's" in a tone that is none too convincing. He hasn't a clue. He was simply following the revivalist playbook handed down, in direct succession, from the likes of Charles Finney and Dwight Moody (i.e., "new measures" and electric lights on Sunday night). They didn't know, and neither did he, that it takes Holy Tradition to make holy people. It takes the the Body and Blood of Christ to make the Body of Christ, saved by His Blood. It takes Apostolic Succession to make, you guessed it, Christian Success.

If I were in a crankier, sourer mood, I would suggest that one of the many reasons why the true full gospel Church of the Apostles isn't attended as it should be is because there are so many Christian Lite enterprises out there making things quasi-simpler, more stylish, up-to-date. I offer fasting, prayer ropes, confession and intincted communion. They offer powerpoint, starbucks and healthclubs, and a very active singles' circuit. Which would you pick if you were shopping around?

The Cross is always out of date, out of style, out of worldly wisdom and sense. "He that cometh after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." The Son of Man must be lifted up in the wilderness, in an evangel that offers charismata, but requires ascesis, and always involves martyrdom.

That's the old style of eternity. Try to match that to the new style of megachurchinanity: "You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come."

Megaresy indeed.

Comments

[handmaid mary-leah]

is that "megaresy" or "mega-heresy"? or a bit of both?

[David_Bryan]

Fr., bless,

In all fairness to the High Desert churchmen, the song was geared towards the 7th to 8th graders, after all...

And, if I can be a bit of a wet blanket re: the Willow Creek Confession: we Orthodox, it seems to me, have little room to talk about others' not producing high percentages of intense, disciplined believers -- and we, as you note, do possess the apostolic gifts necessary to achieve said fervor. Who, then, deserves more criticism?

True, true: "At least we're going down the right path!" Also true is that those of us converts who did find our (own) way into the Church do tend to be self-starters and "self-feeders," but what of those raised in this Faith, cruciform though it may be, who nevertheless know little and have felt less of the cosmic drama of Divine Longing, man's wretched, desperate state, and the glorious reality of redemption and participation in the glorious Kingdom? More to the point, do we converts owe OUR awareness of the above to our time spent in Evangelical circles, and is said awareness the fount of our being "self-feeders" in the first place?

While megachurches may run short on meat and attempt to compensate through programs, workshops and "seminars and coffee bars," as I like to say, the "quasi-simpler" approach of these megachurches does often succeed in conveying the idea (if nothing else) of the kerygma of mankind's need for a Savior and gratitude for their idea of redemption is.

Were we Orthodox to refocus on this in all our ascetic endeavor, well...I wonder at the possibilities...

[Fr. Jonathan]

Well, yes, David, we Orthodox are subject to a great deal of criticism, even moreso than anyone else since "judgment begins in the House of the Lord." Should we repent? Yes. Should we struggle more toward theosis? Yes. Do we fail and sin? Yes.

But should we evaluate or judge our parishes for their results? No. That is not done in Orthodoxy, and it shouldn't be. We proclaim the Nicene Creed, we read the Epistle and Gospel in Liturgy, we sing the Liturgy. We try to pray, fast, and minister to our neighbors. We participate in the anaphora, and we witness the epiclesis.

That is enough.

Megachurches do not only run short on meat, but they run short on milk, too. I will make even plainer my main proposition in the piece above: megachurches are not only deficient, if not heretical, as the quasi-churches they are -- they also double the harm in detracting people away from Holy Tradition.

With all respect, I think you are too sanguine about the quality of the kerygma pronounced by these organizations: that kerygma, of which Hybels is probably of the better sort, acts as an inoculation against the "virus" of grace.

I am not a self-feeder at all. Neither are you. We were different in the evangelical church because we simply accepted the grace that Jesus gives to all the world through the Orthodox Church. Moreover, every single "cradle Orthodox" in my home parish and in my pastoral charges that I have had the privilege to administer have revealed to me the cosmic drama in Divine longing.

These Orthodox faithful who are not so intense and disciplined (and I am no better) are the ones who grew up praying to the Theotokos and uttering the Trinitarian Creed, in a sort of "of course" simplicity.

I feed off this simple faith that is deep, an unlettered, unsophisticated faith that far outstrips the megachurch neglect of the Trinity, the two natures of the Son, and the sacramentality of the apostolic deposit.

[David_Bryan]

Thanks for your reply, Father. Could you clarify a couple of comments you made, please?

"I am not a self-feeder at all. Neither are you." -- Are you referring to the services/prayers/lectionary w/which the Church feeds us?

"We were different in the evangelical church because we simply accepted the grace that Jesus gives to all the world through the Orthodox Church."

How did we "simply accept" the grace of Orthodoxy as Protestants, and how is that a bad thing if we did?

"Moreover, every single "cradle Orthodox" in my home parish and in my pastoral charges that I have had the privilege to administer have revealed to me the cosmic drama in Divine longing."

Could you give some concrete examples of this?

Thank you...

[Fr. Jonathan]

That sentence, "We were different in the evangelical church because we simply accepted the grace that Jesus gives to all the world through the Orthodox Church" is ambiguous at best. The "we" refers to you and me, and the "difference" refers to our hearing the universal call of Orthodoxy and actually responding -- which I unfortunately described as "simple acceptance."

"Self-feeding" is probably a term to which I cannot respond reasonably. I think it is a rather protestant term connoting self-determination. I am afraid that the penchant toward autonomy and self-determination is a patent difficulty experienced by most ex-protestant converts: they unconsciously import that grossly unfortunate "townhall" polity they inherited from the congregationalists.

In contrast, the Church feeds us in every ecclesial experience. It feeds all those who are being saved -- even those who are still protestant. Protestants would be neither Trinitarian nor scriptural without the legacy of Orthodoxy. Megachurches are the completion of the protestant movement, in eradicating almost every vestige of the Church. Try to find even one megachurch that mentions the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, or even utters the Names of the Three Persons on Sunday morning.

My best concrete examples of persons who reveal the "cosmic drama in Divine longing" are many, but I cannot tell you the particulars since this drama is revealed in every single confession. I will assure you that my most nominal faithful is able to recite the Nicene Creed, make the sign of the Cross, and have received the Eucharist on occasion, which is more than what any megachurcher can say.